vet sothebys gagosian book history art market 1234777759

Valentina Castellani, a veteran of Sotheby’s and Gagosian, is releasing a new book titled 'Trading Beauty: Art Market Histories from the Altar to the Gallery'. The publication aims to fill a pedagogical gap Castellani discovered while teaching at New York University, providing a comprehensive chronological overview of the art market from the Renaissance to the post-pandemic era. Published by Gagosian and distributed by Rizzoli, the book features a cover by Maurizio Cattelan and an introduction by Massimiliano Gioni.

gerhard richter fondation louis vuitton paris 2713209

German artist Gerhard Richter has opened a major monographic exhibition at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, titled simply “Gerhard Richter.” The show features approximately 270 artworks, making it nearly three times larger than his 2020 retrospective at the Met Breuer in New York. Curated by former Tate director Nicholas Serota and Dieter Schwarz, former director of Zurich’s Kunstmuseum Winterthur, the exhibition is arranged chronologically to trace the evolution of Richter’s diverse oeuvre—from photo paintings and abstractions to Strip artworks and recent drawings. Highlights include early works like *Tisch (Table)* (1962), his first photo painting, and *Verkündigung nach Tizian (Annunciation after Titian)* (1973), created after his Venice Biennale debut.

ifpda print fair 2023 2386055

The 30th edition of the International Fine Print Dealers Association (IFPDA) Print Fair concluded at New York’s Javits Center, featuring 77 international exhibitors. The fair showcased a vast chronological range of works, from $2 million Edvard Munch prints to contemporary editions priced at $200, attracting a diverse crowd of collectors and institutional buyers.

pompidou free access wolfgang tillmans 2656918

Celine is partnering with the Centre Pompidou to offer free public access on four select days this summer, coinciding with Wolfgang Tillmans's major exhibition "Nothing Could Have Prepared Us – Everything Could Have Prepared Us." The initiative, "Accès Libre par Celine," launches June 13 and continues on July 3, August 28, and September 22. Tillmans's exhibition occupies the museum's entire second floor, typically home to the Bibliothèque publique d'information (Bpi), and runs through September 22. Rather than a chronological retrospective, the installation engages directly with the building's architecture, repurposing library furniture and redesigning partitions. The show follows Tillmans's traveling retrospective "To Look Without Fear" at MoMA in 2022 and a recent solo presentation at David Zwirner.

diane arbus haunting new retrospective 2653004

The largest-ever exhibition of Diane Arbus's work, titled "Constellation," opens today at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City. Featuring over 450 prints—many previously unpublished—the immersive show debuted at LUMA Arles in 2023 and arrives in the U.S. with its original labyrinthine format. Curated by Matthieu Humery, the exhibition presents Arbus's iconic photographs of marginalized figures, celebrities, and everyday people without chronological or narrative order, emphasizing her equalizing gaze. The prints come from the collection of Maja Hoffmann, who acquired the complete set of printer's proofs from Neil Selkirk, the only person authorized by the Diane Arbus Estate to print from her negatives.

An Audacious $724 Million Building Reinvents LACMA

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has unveiled the David Geffen Galleries, a $724 million architectural feat designed by Peter Zumthor. This massive, horizontal structure spans over Wilshire Boulevard, replacing several older buildings with a single, elevated concrete form. The new space abandons traditional chronological and geographical silos in favor of rotating, thematic displays that integrate the museum’s diverse encyclopedic collections.

photo london 2025 standouts 2644574

Photo London's 10th edition opened with a buoyant mood despite co-founder Michael Benson acknowledging a difficult economic climate. The fair features classics by pioneers like Henri Cartier-Bresson and Brassaï, alongside emerging artists through its Discovery section and Positions platform. Standouts include Palestinian-American artist Adam Rouhana's poignant images of joy and resistance, the special exhibition "London Lives" curated by Francis Hodgson featuring 30 photographers, and a notable booth by Guerin Projects showcasing Robin Hunter Blake's chronophotographic works paired with Rodin's The Kiss.

The Triumphant New LACMA Has the Potential to Rewrite Art History

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is set to open its new $724 million David Geffen Galleries, designed by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor. The building features a radical, non-linear layout that eschews traditional chronological and geographical hierarchies, allowing artworks from 15 different curatorial departments to be displayed in conversation with one of another. Despite years of controversy regarding its concrete design and a 10 percent reduction in exhibition space, the museum is positioning the new structure as a flexible "laboratory" for global art history.

‘Designed to disorient’: LA art museum unveils enormous concrete gallery, 20 years in the making

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has unveiled the David Geffen Galleries, a $724 million concrete structure designed by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor. Spanning Wilshire Boulevard, the building features 110,000 square feet of elevated gallery space characterized by curving walls and massive windows. The project marks the culmination of a nearly 20-year revitalization effort led by director Michael Govan, replacing several older buildings with a single, fluid architectural statement.

Gagosian's spring show skips and rhymes through De Kooning's career

Gagosian Gallery in New York has opened "Willem de Kooning: Endless Painting," a non-chronological exhibition curated by Cecilia Alemani that spans the artist's career from 1944 to 1986. The show features institutional loans from MoMA and the Guggenheim, includes two sculptures—including the colossal bronze "Standing Figure" displayed indoors for the first time in nearly 30 years—and runs through June 14. A panel with artists John Currin and Dana Schutz will explore de Kooning's influence on May 15.

13 Nudes That Changed Western Art History

The article presents a curated list of 13 seminal Western artworks featuring the nude form, highlighting how each piece shifted artistic conventions and cultural perceptions. It begins with the Paleolithic Venus of Willendorf and moves chronologically through works by artists including Sandro Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Lavinia Fontana, and Édouard Manet, analyzing their groundbreaking approaches to depicting the human body.

Readymades, replicas, reiterations: MoMA show explores Marcel Duchamp the inventor

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York is launching the first major U.S. survey of Marcel Duchamp in over 50 years, organized in collaboration with the Philadelphia Museum of Art. The exhibition features approximately 300 works, including iconic pieces like "Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2" and "Fountain," organized in a strict linear chronology. This approach highlights Duchamp’s practice of remaking and replicating his own work, presenting replicas only at the point in time they were physically created rather than as stand-ins for lost originals.

david hammons artist book hauser wirth 1234743679

David Hammons has released a "post-exhibition catalogue" through Hauser & Wirth Publishers, six years after his 2019 survey at the gallery's Downtown Los Angeles location. The 12-by-12-inch, nearly 7-pound volume contains hundreds of images—installation shots, artwork reproductions, and ephemera—but no text whatsoever: no table of contents, essays, titles, dates, or page numbers. The book functions more as an artist's book than a traditional exhibition catalog, presenting Hammons's work in a raw, unapologetic sequence that resists scholarly interpretation.

art michael govan lacma renovations

Michael Govan, director of LACMA, discusses the opening of the new $720 million David Geffen Galleries on April 19, designed by architect Peter Zumthor. The 110,000-square-foot space features concrete walls, natural light, and spans Wilshire Boulevard, replacing traditional white-cube galleries with a fluid, non-chronological layout organized around bodies of water. Govan, who has led the museum for two decades, describes the project as a once-in-a-century opportunity to rethink the encyclopedic museum model.

overlooked no more jack whitten ascends with a stellar retrospective at moma

The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) has opened "Jack Whitten: The Messenger," a major posthumous retrospective featuring nearly 200 objects, mostly paintings, by the late artist Jack Whitten. Curated by MoMA's curator at large Michelle Kuo, the exhibition occupies MoMA's top-floor gallery and is arranged largely chronologically, highlighting Whitten's experimental techniques such as using dried acrylic tesserae and extruding paint through screens. The show includes early works from the 1960s and later mosaic compositions, offering a comprehensive view of his career.

V&A East Launches With a Fresh Lens on a 2.8 Million-Object Collection

The Victoria & Albert Museum has opened V&A East, a new $180 million outpost in east London designed by architects O'Donnell + Tuomey. Its mission is to engage young and local audiences by presenting over 500 objects from its 2.8 million-strong collection in thematic, non-chronological displays that connect historical artifacts to contemporary issues like identity, social justice, and environmental responsibility.

LACMA’s New Building Invites You to Chart Your Own Path

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) is set to open its long-awaited and highly debated new building, the David Geffen Galleries. Designed by Swiss architect Peter Zumthor, the $720 million concrete structure spans Wilshire Boulevard and replaces several older buildings with a single, elevated exhibition level. The opening marks the culmination of a decade-long project spearheaded by Director Michael Govan, featuring a non-linear layout that integrates the museum's encyclopedic collection into thematic displays rather than traditional chronological or regional divisions.

rembrandt authenticated rijksmuseum 2749634

Advanced imaging and material analysis have officially reattributed the 1633 painting "Vision of Zacharias in the Temple" to Rembrandt van Rijn. The work, which had been dismissed by scholars in the 1960s as the product of a collaborator, underwent a rigorous two-year study by the Rijksmuseum’s conservation department. Using macro-XRF scanning and dendrochronological analysis, researchers identified characteristic pentimenti and period-accurate materials that confirm it as a masterpiece from the artist's early Amsterdam period.

she is an icon of finnish art now modernist helene schjerfbeck takes a global stage 2728018

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has opened "Seeing Silence: The Paintings of Helene Schjerfbeck," the first major U.S. survey of the Finnish modernist painter. The exhibition features approximately 60 works spanning Schjerfbeck's entire career, drawn primarily from the Finnish National Gallery / Ateneum Art Museum, as well as other Finnish and Swedish collections. Curated by Dita Amory of the Met and Anna-Maria von Bonsdorff of the Ateneum, the show takes a thematic rather than chronological approach, highlighting Schjerfbeck's evolution from academic realism to a distinctive, introspective modernism.

pierre bonnard louvre bonnarding 2632237

French Post-Impressionist artist Pierre Bonnard was known for his compulsive habit of retouching his paintings long after they were considered finished, even allegedly sneaking into museums and collectors' homes with a hidden palette and brush to make adjustments. According to the article, Bonnard would enlist friends like fellow artist Édouard Vuillard to distract guards while he worked, and the poet Jane Hirschfield coined the term "bonnarding" to describe this obsessive practice. The article recounts a persistent rumor that Bonnard was once arrested in the Louvre while retouching his own work, though this is likely a myth.

tamara de lempicka us retrospective de young museum 2425747

The de Young Museum in San Francisco will host the first major retrospective of Polish Art Deco painter Tamara de Lempicka in North America this fall, organized by curator Furio Rinaldi with Gioia Mori. The exhibition, titled “Tamara de Lempicka,” brings together her ultramodern masterpieces—including loans from the Centre Pompidou—and explores her lesser-known design process, biography, and evolving identities. It will travel to the Museum of Fine Arts Houston in spring 2025.

Memories Bathed in Color

In Farbe getauchte Erinnerungen

The Fondation Luma in Arles, France, has opened three exhibitions exploring memory and archives, headlined by Gerhard Richter's "Overpainted Photographs." The show features 120 works from Richter's private archive, some exhibited for the first time, created since the mid-1980s by dragging photographs through leftover paint in his studio. Richter, now 94, personally selected and hung the works chronologically starting from the fall of the Berlin Wall, reflecting his lost homeland and the passage of time. The exhibition also includes early sketches and oil paintings by the late architect Zaha Hadid, previously shown at London's Serpentine Gallery in 2016.

LACMA Sets May 4 Opening Date for $724 Million “Curvaceous Concrete Sandwich” as Reviews Pour In

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has announced that its new David Geffen Galleries will officially open to the public on May 4, 2025. Designed by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Peter Zumthor, the $724 million "curvaceous concrete sandwich" spans Wilshire Boulevard and replaces four previous buildings. The inaugural exhibition, organized by a massive team of forty-five curators, will forgo traditional chronological displays in favor of a thematic framework centered on global oceanic exchange, featuring both permanent collection highlights and new commissions from contemporary artists like Lauren Halsey and Do Ho Suh.

Enrico David: ‘It’s as if the objects are there as an avatar for something that has gone’

Italian-born, London-based artist Enrico David is the subject of a major retrospective at the Castello di Rivoli Museo d'Arte Contemporanea near Turin, titled 'I'm Back Tomorrow.' The exhibition, his largest to date, spans three decades of his work and occupies the museum's 147-meter-long Manica Lunga gallery. David first gained attention in the late 1990s for his large embroideries featuring masked figures, many purchased by collector Charles Saatchi, but later shifted to creating psychologically charged sculptures of mutated humanoid forms. The show is arranged not thematically or chronologically but as a series of 'vertebrae' anchoring the space, with elements evoking trade fairs and commercial design—a language familiar from his father's neon-sign business.

On View: 'Amy Sherald: American Sublime' at Whitney Museum of American Art in New York Charts Artist's Two-Decade Career

The Whitney Museum of American Art in New York has opened "Amy Sherald: American Sublime," the largest exhibition of the artist's work and her first solo museum show in the city. Featuring over 40 paintings created between 2007 and 2024, the exhibition includes iconic portraits of Michelle Obama and Breonna Taylor, as well as works inspired by Alfred Eisenstaedt's famous photograph and filmmaker Wes Anderson. The show is organized chronologically, beginning with the rarely seen "Hangman" (2007), and includes "If You Surrendered to the Air, You Could Ride It" (2020), shown for the first time since its acquisition by the Whitney five years ago.

Barber and Osgerby: The Best of London Design Arrives in Exhibition in Milan

Barber e Osgerby: il meglio del design londinese arriva in mostra a Milano

Designers Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby have opened a major exhibition, 'Edward Barber | Jay Osgerby. Alphabet,' at the Triennale di Milano. The show presents a chronological survey of their work from the mid-1990s to 2022, featuring furniture, objects, and prototypes displayed on large plinths, alongside an archival section revealing their creative process.

The Colors of Mark Rothko Conquer Florence: A Major Exhibition Across Three Venues

I colori di Mark Rothko conquistano Firenze: una grande mostra in tre sedi

The city of Florence is hosting a major three-venue retrospective dedicated to Mark Rothko, centered at Palazzo Strozzi with extensions into the Museo di San Marco and the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana. Curated by Christopher Rothko and Elena Geuna, the exhibition features 70 works spanning the artist's career, from his early Surrealist-influenced paintings of the 1930s and 40s to his iconic 'Multiform' and classic color-field abstractions. A unique highlight of the show is the installation of Rothko’s smaller works within the historic cells of the Museo di San Marco, directly alongside frescoes by Beato Angelico.

Berlin Art: What Exhibitions Are on Now?

Berlin’s spring art season features a diverse array of exhibitions ranging from established international names to local prize winners. Key highlights include Yalda Afsah’s spiritual film installation at CCA Berlin, Jim Lambie’s psychedelic vinyl floor works at Konrad Fischer Galerie, and the 10th Neukölln Art Prize exhibition at Galerie im Saalbau, which honors artists like Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi. The city's programming spans non-profit institutions, commercial galleries, and experimental spaces, covering themes from folk traditions to gender identity.

Edward Burtynsky’s photographs convey the force of mankind’s reordering of the environment

The International Center of Photography (ICP) in New York is presenting "Edward Burtynsky: The Great Acceleration," a retrospective of over 70 photographs by Canadian photographer Edward Burtynsky, on view until September 28. Curated by ICP creative director David Campany, the exhibition spans Burtynsky's 40-year career documenting humanity's industrial transformation of natural landscapes, from Ontario mines and Texas oilfields to shipbreaking yards in Bangladesh and e-waste sites in China. The show is organized thematically rather than chronologically, featuring early small-scale works alongside massive recent prints, including a 10-foot-wide image of a copper mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo and a 30-foot mural of a Texas farm printed on adhesive vinyl.

LACMA Got a Makeover

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) has unveiled its new David Geffen Galleries, featuring an unconventional open-plan design that encourages non-linear exploration. The building's layout, which eschews traditional chronological narratives in favor of free-floating associations, has sparked debate among critics regarding its navigability and the restoration of key works like Alexander Calder’s "Three Quintains (Hello Girls)."